لعبة التطويق والكلفة الأمريكية-الإيرانية

The Americans are fighting Iran with its own tools. This is what the ongoing war proves in its efforts to break Iran's influence and change its behavior in the region, by at least pushing it to accept American conditions. The minimum does not mean abandoning the larger, postponed goal, which is the complete overthrow of the regime, but not in the traditional American way through invasions, which have all had poor outcomes in the countries where Americans entered to overthrow their regimes, leading to chaos instead of development and stability, or producing counterproductive results as happened in Iraq. In Iraq, not only was Saddam Hussein's regime overthrown, but in reality and practically, Iraq was handed over to Iranian influence for decades based on American calculations in the region at that time.

Since the beginning of the American war against it, Iran has adopted a policy of raising costs not on the United States, but primarily on the countries of the region, under the pretext that striking these countries will push their rulers and leaders to pressure Trump to stop the war.

Iran aimed for attrition from the start of the war, so it resorted to using what it considers its cards of power, starting with proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, extending to the piracy of the Strait of Hormuz and attempting to impose a new reality to cement its influence over it. Trump did not withdraw from the war contrary to Iranian expectations, nor did the Arab countries yield. Most importantly, Trump changed the rules of the game, and instead of slipping into Iran's preferred arena of attrition, he used the same tools in confrontation. He imposed a blockade on the Iranian blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and worked, in cooperation with other concerned countries, to create alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz to remove this card, while simultaneously beginning to implement a process of political and security reconfiguration in the region by exerting maximum pressure on Iran's arenas that have long formed the first line of defense for the Iranian regime, namely its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. Concurrently, Trump launched the "Economic Landing Day" or "Economic Pariah" operation, which targets Tehran's parallel funding networks from the shadow economy or trade and digital financial operations, among others. This operation constitutes the most important weapon in the American war because it aims to dismantle the networks that allow Tehran to circumvent sanctions and blockades.

Today, the confrontation with Iran enters a complex phase. Iran still insists on its policy of raising costs; therefore, it has now shifted from raising military costs to raising economic costs, through what it considers the "emptying of America's strategy" in its economic war against Iran.

In parallel, the United States has begun a campaign of encirclement aimed at striking the structure of Iran's proxies in the countries where they operate. In response, Iran is working to counter this campaign by restructuring the framework of its proxies and their operational mechanisms based on a decentralized regional jihadist model, alongside adopting decentralization within the structure of each proxy, meaning dividing these groups themselves into teams that operate independently of each other within the same country or arena.

From this very perspective, the "temporary" military withdrawal of Hezbollah in Lebanon should be read in contrast to opening an internal battle against the state to empty it of its function and thwart the process of weapon control and maintain its existence and influence, as well as the distribution of roles and duality of discourse and practice among the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the dual operations carried out by the Houthi militia in Yemen between the military battle against the Yemeni state on one hand, and the aggression against the Kingdom and attempts to control Bab el-Mandeb on the other.